Beau Lamarre-Condon allegedly told a friend “I love you’” and “not everything in the news is true” a month after he was arrested over a double murder, a court has heard.
Lamarre-Condon, ۳۱, has been accused of fatally shooting Sydney couple Jesse Baird and Luke Davies with his police service weapon in Baird’s Paddington home on ۱۹ February ۲۰۲۴.
The former police officer has pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder and one charge of aggravated break and enter.
Dayna Schagen, who was a friend of Lamarre-Condon and is an officer with the NSW police, told his trial on Monday about a call she received in late March ۲۰۲۴, about a month after the alleged murders.
She initially did not pick up because it came at about ۹pm from a number she did not recognise and she believed it was “rude to call after dinner time on a weeknight”.
But after the number dialled a second time, she picked up the phone and immediately recognised Lamarre-Condon’s voice.
According to her police statement, which was read to the court, he said, “Dayna, it’s Beau,” and she responded, “what the fuck, why are you calling me”.
He then said: “I just wanted to tell you that I love you and before you do anything, you need to know not everything in the news is true. It will all come out in court.”
The court heard Schagen then cut off Lamarre-Condon and said: “You killed two people, why would I ever want to speak to you again?”
She then told her boss about the phone call and made a statement to police about the incident.
Schagen did not have any role in the police investigation into the double murders as an officer.
Earlier on Monday, Schagen told the jury Lamarre-Condon had been seeing Baird on and off during ۲۰۲۳ and had been hoping to turn it into a relationship.
When Baird made it clear he wasn’t interested and the two broke up in April ۲۰۲۳, Lamarre-Condon was “still very much invested in him”, Schagen said.
“I believed that he missed him and still very much wanted to be in a relationship. It was a sore spot for the accused,” she told the court.
Baird ended things with Lamarre-Condon in November ۲۰۲۳.
The policeman allegedly told Schagen he had “fucked up” after Baird found out he had gone through Baird’s phone, and blocked a man Baird had been sleeping with, without his knowledge.
When she found out, Schagen told Lamarre-Condon she was “mortified he did something so stupid when they weren’t in a relationship”, the court heard.
“You’ve got no grounds to be pissed off about who he’s sleeping with, you’re not together,” she allegedly told the policeman.
Days before the alleged murders, on ۱۴ February ۲۰۲۴, Lamarre-Condon asked Schagen a “hypothetical question” about work, she told the jury.
He allegedly asked: “if you were at work and there was a job broadcast over the radio for gunshots fired, what would the police response be if someone jumped on the radio and said, ‘we’ve been flagged by a member of the public who said that children were letting fireworks off’?”
She told him police would disregard it and move on due to the sheer volume of jobs she received.
The prosecution clarified to the jury that those with a police radio can hear jobs being broadcast.
After seeing news of Baird and Davies’ disappearance, Schagen sent a message to Lamarre-Condon on ۲۲ February ۲۰۲۴ that said: “are you ok? Have you spoken to him? What the fuck is going on?”
She did not receive a response, and told the court at this point she believed she had “an indication” Lamarre-Condon was potentially involved.
A day later, she saw he had been active on Facebook’s messaging service and asked him: “Where the fuck are you and what’s all this shit in the media, what’s going on?”
He opened the message but didn’t respond, the court heard.
She confirmed the conversation they had about police response to reports of gunshots were on her mind and that is why she eventually approached police.
The defence team has claimed Baird and Davies were accidentally shot in two separate struggles with the accused while he acted in “self-defence”.
The trial before Justice Natalie Adams continues.
